Cool Rules Pronto

As a writer, I love learning new words and phrases…

Just today, while reading GOOD Magazine (that bastion of liberal living), I came across the expression “vegetarian inclined,” which describes omnivores who are eating less meat for health reasons. (You can count me amongst them — and wow, do I miss bacon.)

Then, just last night, I had a dream where this attractive woman tells me that she likes men with “gypsy necks”: perfectly smooth flawless necks that look like “wisps of smoke that have been cut off.” I can’t tell you what the rest of the dream was about (this isn’t that kind of blog), but I will say that I should avoid drinking pumpkin ales before bedtime.

One of my favorite terms of the past decade is “anticipointment,” which is the inevitable disappointment you feel when you finally experience something that’s been over-hyped. For example, early viewers of “The Blair Witch Project” touted its brilliance, which essentially set the low-budget horror film up for a vicious fall among later viewers — who were acutely anticipointed, to say the least. I’m guessing many people who finally see “No Country for Old Men” will also be anticipointed now that it’s won the Oscar for Best Picture. (For the record, I thought “Michael Clayton” was a far better flick. Seriously, I love the Coen Brothers, but 20 minutes to move a suitcase from one motel room to another?)

Hot Urban Dictionary Action

I just learned about an entire site dedicated to the joy of crafting new words and phrases: Urban Dictionary features neologisms created by its users. (I know, it’s been around for nine years, and I’m late to the game.) For example, I love this term from yesterday:

Lawyer Ball: The art of playing the rules instead of playing a game. For example, trying to work out a walk in slow-pitch softball. Swing the bat, you puss! Also applicable to weenies who demand free throws after the slightest contact in a pick-up basketball game and d-bags who take yardage penalties in backyard football games.
Pops: Hit it out of the park, boy!
Son: Don’t pressure me, I’m trying to work the count.
Pops: Don’t play lawyer ball, son.

Urban Dictionary is supported by sales of its own compilations in book form, and by advertising. (By the way, one of its advertisers, Busted Tees, has some hilarious T-shirts, such as, “Pedro Lacks Political Experience.” Who says I’m anti-T-shirt marketers?)

In the spirit of Web 2.0, Urban Dictionary lets you submit your own words. Claire Barry, the CEO of  multimedia-design agency Click Media, is both a “pixel vixen” (as it says on her business card) and a word freak. And late one night, she coined a word of her own:

Lushaliscious: A hottie that drinks too much, but is still in the first phase of buzz that she’s still hot enough to be alluring, but not embarrassing yet. The perfect time to hit it up. Serena was lushaliscious by about 12:30am - she was still grinding on the dance floor, not rolling around on it.

According to Claire, “It was Saturday afternoon, and I was on Perez and TMZ, looking at the post-Hollywood ‘hot mess’ club carnage from the night before. That’s what prompted the challenge to come up with the word to replace the term ‘hot mess.’” The oops moment? Claire tried to email her new word and sample sentence (using her own name, not “Serena”) to herself, but inadvertently sent it to her company-wide email address. I had the fortune of being there when she saw her 30 employees for the first time the next day. The grins at their boss were priceless.

P.S. I met Claire through Cool Rules Pronto, since she was the first to comment on my article Are You For Real, Monica Rockle?, thus proving that there’s value in mad blogging. There should be a word for that…

Update 4/26/8: I just coined my own word at the Urban Dictionary: unitarded. It’s a politically correct substitute for the word “retarded” that describes something so silly or lame that it’s laughably dysfunctional. It’s derived from the item of clothing known as the “unitard” that makes most people look ludicrous.